Provided that they stop spontaneously blowing up, SpaceX’s Dragon rockets will someday carry astronauts up to the International Space Station. It’s a long, potentially explosive road to a manned mission, but a recent ground simulation puts the team closer.

At the avionics testbed facility in Hawthorne, California, the SpaceX team recently simulated a flight to the ISS on the Crew Dragon vehicle. It’s the first time the hardware and software has all worked together to simulate a mission, which makes this a big deal: nothing suddenly burst into flames, and the Crew Dragon avionics was proved to work.

“It may not sound exciting, but it’s a really, really important tool. We can basically fly the Crew Dragon on the ground — flip the switches, touch the screens, test the algorithms and the batteries – all before testing the avionics system in flight,” said Hans Koenigsmann, vice president of mission assurance for SpaceX.

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Provided that everything goes to plan, the first crewed flight is scheduled to take place in 2-3 years.